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}
Up to the age of 9 or 10, the services of such a girl would probably be adequately remunerated by the provision of board and lodging and I do not suggest any monetary payment in these cases.
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Between that age and 18 wages should be paid at rates to be fixed hereafter, the rate would be more or less nominal up to the age of say 15 and thereafter a sum based on the rate of wages normally paid in households where paid maid servants are employed.
These wages should not be paid to the girl, but should be placed to her credit in a bank and accumulate until she reaches the age of 18 when the accumulations should be at her disposal.
Girls above the age of 18 can make their own bargains in regard to wages.
(The ages quoted above are inserted for the sake of illustration. The exact ages and the rates of pay are
among the details that require to be elaborated in
consultation with the Chinese advisers of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs. It will also be necessary to make
some provision for seeing that payments to the girls'
bank accounts are duly made.)
(e.) No girl must in future be taken as a mui-tsai. Muai-
tsais already in the employment of families who come
from China to settle here must be registered on arrival
and treated in all respects in the same way as mui-
tsais now in Hongkong.
(f.) No one shall in future employ a female domestic servant,
other than one of the former mui-tasis provided for
above, below the age of ten years.
(This provision seems to me to be necessary in order to prevent evasion of the law.)
8.
Legislation on these lines would, I submit,
effect what is required as soon as possible. The status of
mui-tsai
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